


Voice of E

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Post-Canon, Regrets, also he cant fucking let shit be, and hes making a short, joey is old, joey knows the struggle of finding a fucking title, the other main character is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 07:18:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17341025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: You stupid old man.You're the only one letting that ghost haunt you.





	Voice of E

A title. Everything - at least, for others - starts with a title.

He’d done everything else.

Now, all that he needed was a title.

Joey sat at his desk and held his pen so tight, he was ready to break it.

 

A title.

 

Just. A title.

You’ve written many, Drew. Just write another one.

 

Little Devil Darling.

 

He drew a thousand lines over it. No, no, not that. That was… That was too silly.

Too repetitive.

He had to find a better one.

A title.

That’s all you need.

 

The Demon on the Rope.

 

He scratched it hard enough to tear the paper. What was up with him?

Think, Joey. Just think.

You know you have it.

Now take it out.

 

Scrapped, scrapped, scrapped, scrapped, scrapped, scrapped.

 

None of them were good.

 

The old animator sighed, running his hands through his hair.

He was tired.

He looked at the almost completed storyboards. Everything was in place. Everything, from start to finish, even how he wanted it to sound. There was just one, flimsy missing piece and there was nothing he could come up with was nearly good enough to fit.

He could have just named it Project, or In Memory.

But that would have been too simple for a man of his caliber.

Whatever he thought the caliber of a fallen emperor was.

The pencil trembled in his hand.

He should have gone through the storyboards. One more time. To make sure everything was perfect. Maybe he would have found the title in one of them.

A good idea.

He took a long breath. Something felt cold.

He looked over the silent pictures, witnessing them moving with a smooth flow in the back of his mind. No music nor lines, it was a mute short: the only sounds were the shuffling of bare feet and a few rustles of wind.

There were words, but only written. Not said.

Only animated letters.

No voices.

“Sono molto stanco.”

 

Joey agreed, though he didn’t move an inch.

“Non hai freddo?”

His Italian didn’t go further than that sentence, sadly.

“Aren’t you cold?”

A little, maybe. He sucked in a breath and still didn’t say a word.

“I heard old people get cold easily.”

He could feel something pressing onto him, as if a body had slumped on his head and shoulders to seek rest. It felt chilly. The air couldn’t possibly have moved, but it sure felt like it did.

“I don’t know, though.”

His blood curled.

Was this his punishment? His eternal damnation, destined to follow him until the day of his death and keep haunting him past it?

 

_A close-up on two mad eyes, crazy eyes, feverishly and terrifiedly looking over him. They see something else, that no one else can ever know. He moves and the mad eyes fall to the ground, they snarl, they crawl, they cry, they try to bite and they’re held back._

_“I WON’T LET YOU GET ME!” they scream, and the big sepia letters tear apart the black background, “I WON’T LET YOU GET ME!”, and the nails of thin hands are like furious claws.  
_

_This is the second time the hallucinations have caused such a violent reaction. It will happen another time, and then never again._

_The mad eyes are scared. Maybe their fear isn’t unmotivated._

 

That voice.

He needed that voice.

He needed it to creak and crackle its way into the drawings.

Somehow.

He needed to listen to it.

Maybe the title was somewhere in the words spoken.

~~_“I WON’T LET YOU GET ME!”_ ~~

“Your hands are shaking.”

Oh. So they were.

Joey laid back on his chair. A shaky breath departed from his mouth as if sure it would be his last one.

His body felt empty.

He should eat something.

Yes.

He should.

He didn’t manage to move.

“Eggs.”

Joey had wheeled his way to the kitchen. How, exactly, he did not know.

“Make eggs.”

How much does it take to fry an egg? He’d never asked himself before.

He stared at it sizzling in the frying pan.

Trying his hardest to ignore the hand ghosting next to the stove.

If he’d turned just a little, he knew he would have noticed the entire body sitting on the counter, covered in millions upon millions of freckles and a good hundred or so moles. He could hear the fabric of his big overalls rustling as he kicked the air absentmindedly, waiting for something.

For freedom, for revenge, for food, for a punchline, for a heart attack.

For anything.

Maybe he was just waiting for nothing.

More than likely not. That didn’t feel very in character. Or maybe it was? He hadn’t written him. How would he know what he’d be waiting for.

The hand moved, drawing his attention to it.

Joey did his best not to take his eyes off the frying pan.

The body shifted slowly as it tried to completely cover his field of vision, forcing him to acknowledge its presence like a cat demanding to be fed.

No. He was too old now. This time more than ever didn’t feel like the best moment to lose what little sanity the passing years had left him.

 

“I saw you killing me to make a perfect demon.”

 

The eggs burned.

Joey threw them away and hid his face in his hands to turn everything black.

He heard something being chewed a couple of times, though the only food he had made had been discarded.

 

“Did you want to?”

He gasped for air, not answering.

He had to find a title.

 

“Did you think of that as a solution?”

Immediately.

 

“As a way to get rid of your problems?”

~~_“I WON’T LET YOU GET ME!”_ ~~

“You stupid old man.”

 

Joey turned around and left the kitchen.

He stumbled into the living room like a ghost, breathing heavily, unaware of everything around him until his outstretched hands encountered and firmly grabbed the back of his armchair. The achievements, happy endings and failed dreams he’d stuck on the bulletin board beside him mocked his pain and looked down on him, even though the faces in the photos were smiling and gleeful, frozen in happier times.

 

“He looks a lot like me.”

 

Joey wanted to vomit as the nausea caught his throat in a strict knot.

In the back of his mind he could see the cold finger gently follow the lines of a child’s face on the paper.

“No… He’s… More lovely.”

God, how he wished he’d stopped talking.

“Have you met him yet?”

This time, he gave a weak shake of the head. A loud, disappointed sigh hit his ears hard enough to make him clench the armchair’s frame harder.

Just to remind himself what was real and what wasn’t.

His imagination moved a ghostly hand to grab the picture between its index and its thumb as it looked longigly at the pair holding the smaller body as if it was their whole world.

(It could have been him. It should have been him. Maybe. Joey didn’t know.)

Then the digit glided over every other photo, grabbing and recognizing every last one of them-

 

“You stupid old man.”

The hiss froze his body in a pillar of ice.

He had predicted wrong.

“You’re the one letting me stay.”

He was too close to his ear.

Joey sunk his nails into the wood.

“You’re the one who decided I needed to be remembered.”

He sounded very, very real.

~~_“I WON’T LET YOU GET ME!”_ ~~

“Make me immortal.”

He felt something wrapping very slowly around his arms.

“To say you’re sorry I died because of you.”

He could almost tell each phalanx apart from the other as they ensnared him. 

“You decided to make me immortal.”

He felt his body being pressured to move away from his spot.

“You gave me the colors he never had.”

He didn’t even attempt to fight the force back.

“Just for my eyes.”

The coldest stare looked for his pupils as it shifted him.

“You’re giving me all he never had.”

The voice snuck into his collar, making him shiver.

“Just because you decided to.”

He was sat in front of his working table. Storyboards were scattered across it.

“You’re the only one allowing me to stay.”

The pencil was put into his hands; he grabbed it by reflex.

“Now make me  _leave_.”

 

* * *

 

“Hello? Mr. Drew?.”

“Kim? I didn’t think I’d hear from you.”

“Yes, Niamh is more the type to do this kind of thing…”

“What, you wouldn’t call your old boss from time to time?”

“It’s not that, sir-”

“Please, Joey. Joey is fine.”

“Sorry, Joey. It’s just… We saw your short.”

“Ah.”

The mere news of Joey Drew publishing a brand new cartoon thirty unproductive years after shutting down his studio had filled thousands with astonishment. In a good way, of course. A sort of nostalgic, I-can’t-believe-after-all-this-time-he-still-has-it kind of way.

The short reel, so different from the old rubberhose adventures of Bendy and with such a strange name (some speculated it was an obscure homage to a deceased friend) brought him mixed reactions from all fronts.

There was one particularly curious response that always found its way to his door, though.

Old acquaintances began writing to him and calling him all of a sudden.

Minutes and words wasted as they talked of nothing.

He could almost feel their eyes averting his own as they spoke or wrote, purposely ignoring the elephant in the room, although it had been what had hurried them to contact them.

Only Kim, shy, quiet, tactful Kim, addressed it.

 

Thoughtful.

 

He called it “thoughtful”.

 

And something in the softness of how he spoke added “heart-breaking”.

 

Joey allowed the rest of the conversation to slip through his memory without clinging to it, conversing distractly while twisting and turning those two words in his hands in the solace of his living room.

It was only when the call ended that he noticed how silent the house was.

No matter how closely he listened, the only sounds he could hear were only his own breath and heartbeat. No rustling of trousers; no bare feet on the floor.

No icy cold fingers dragging lazily on the forniture.

It was just quiet.

Joey felt himself carefully slumping on his seat, his will losing its grip on his muscles. A sigh of relief escaped his lips by accident.

He closed his eyes.

Someone got up from the other chair.

“I’ll be going.”

“Ah, it’s fine.” he mumbled, “Just close the door when you get out.”

He could swear he heard the doorknob turn and unlock.

“You’re a stupid old man.”

“How dare you.” he chuckled a little. His brows furrowed.

He was alone, wasn’t he?

The door closed gently behind him and left Joey with his thoughts.

**Author's Note:**

> thetitleoftheshortisthetitleofthefic


End file.
